Three years in the making, Recipes for Disaster
is the long-awaited follow-up to the CrimethInc. collective’s
notorious first book, Days of War, Nights of Love.
This 400-page manual complements the romance and idealism
of that earlier work with practical information and
instruction. Over thirty collectives collaborated in
testing, composing, and editing the book’s 62
sections, which range from Affinity Groups, Coalition
Building, and Mental Health to Sabotage,
Squatting, and Wheatpasting. These are
illustrated with extensive technical diagrams and first-hand
accounts, and prefaced with a thorough discussion of
the diverse roles direct action can play in social transformation.
If you’re looking for a tactical handbook for
revolutionary action, look no further.

This second edition, released in Fall of 2012, is comprised of the same content as the first edition, and boasts a new larger 7" x 10" format; photos and diagrams that are 77% and 164% larger, respectively; twenty-one new photos and a new introduction; improved typography and readability; and a more durable layflat binding. Read a detailed blog post about the improvements and their history here.

“It deserves to be read beyond the circular networks of true believers, for in the grace of its plain-spoken sedition it succeeds as a master-piece of radical propaganda . . . Each recipe is a viral revolt.”

CrimethInc. Declassifies
Top Secret Anarchist Tactics

For ten long years,
our operatives have honed their skills, testing their
wits and mettle against the global capitalist empire,
the most formidable adversary in the history of life
on earth. We have learned how to redecorate the walls
of cities occupied by armies of riot police, to transform
random groups of damaged, isolated individuals into
loving communities capable of supporting one another
through the most severe bouts of repression and depression,
to shut down corporate summits and franchises armed
with little more than plastic piping or eyedroppers
of glue. Now, the notorious CrimethInc. ex-Workers’
Collective has compiled many of the techniques that
made these feats possible into a 624-page manual entitled
Recipes for Disaster.

For those who
have been bewildered by our earlier publications,
wondering what purpose it could possibly serve for
us to tantalize the beleaguered masses with utopian
dreams of life unfettered by state, moral, or economic
laws, it may come as a surprise that we’ve had
a plan all along: offer visions of other possible
worlds, then share concrete means for departing from
this one. For those who gambled that CrimethInc. was
nothing more than a joke, a fad or fantasy that could
be shrugged off, we hope now it will turn out that
it is a practical joke.

So what’s
in this book, and how was the content selected? The
sixty-two recipes run the gamut from Affinity
Groups to Wheatpasting, stopping along
the way at topics as disparate as Hitchhiking,
Sabotage, and Supporting Survivors of Domestic
Violence. Each recipe is illustrated as necessary
with photographs, technical diagrams, and firsthand
accounts—culled, of course, from anonymous sources—of
times the particular method or tactic was applied.

Choosing and editing
the content for such a work is a difficult challenge,
and it took an assembly of more than thirty collectives
nearly three years to complete Recipes for Disaster.
Content was selected and perfected according to three
basic criteria. First, for the sake of safety and
precision, subject matter was limited to methods with
which the authors had extensive experience. Second,
submissions were given preference according to how
much material was already available on the subject:
Recipes for Disaster includes very little
on herbal remedies, as extensive literature has already
been published about them, but features a full thirty-five
pages on organizing black blocs and similar forms
of anonymous mass action, since little resource material
exists for those who would apply this potentially
dangerous yet often useful strategy. Finally, as much
as possible, the recipes are presented from a nonpartisan
angle, with an emphasis on sharing concrete skills
rather than spreading any ideological agenda, so the
book might be of use to the widest possible range
of readers working towards liberation in all its forms.

Inevitably, as
we’ve learned all too well from experience,
those who take on ambitious, public projects are subjected
to the twin scourges of fan worship and vindictive,
unconstructive criticism. As before, we urge admirers
to nurture in themselves whatever worthy qualities
they mistake us for having, and critics to complement
our efforts with efforts of their own rather than
passive disparagement. No one work on the subject
of direct action can possibly be complete, but this
book might serve a useful purpose if others supplement
it with the projects they think we should have undertaken.
In publishing this incomplete, imperfect book, we
hope to provoke others into undertaking more projects
of their own, not freeze them into adulating or offended
spectatorship of our activities.

One might ask
of the publishers of this new anarchist cookbook,
as Emmett Grogan demanded of Abbie Hoffman upon the
publication of Steal This Book!, whether
it has occurred to us that making all these secret
methods public knowledge might hurry them into obsolescence.
In limited cases, this might be true, though we’ve
made an effort to slant the content towards long-term
skills, such as stencil-making, that never go out
of date. At any rate, our answer to this charge is
that these skills and the struggle for which they
are useful must both be extended to much broader circles,
or else they are doomed to obsolescence anyway. The
narrow, comparatively small explicitly anarchist community
of today is a poor match for the assembled power of
the global empire; for massive change to be possible,
anarchist skills and approaches need to be generalized
to a much broader social spectrum. In limited cases,
yes, the powers that be will be able to use our book
to prepare themselves for our efforts to contest their
control, but we hope that this drawback will be outweighed
by the ways in which this work can help equip new
generations to strike blows for freedom from unexpected
directions and in unpredictable ways.

In short, why
give away our secrets? Because if they stay secrets,
we’re fucked. If you associate yourself with
the struggle for a better world, consider how you
can do your part to get these tools into unlikely
hands.

And lest we miss
this chance to make a challenge of our own, we ask
certain paragons of the anarchist community, so pleased
with themselves for perfecting their abilities in
rhetoric and disputation while others have been quietly
working on actually changing the world, to come over
to our side of the barricades. It matters little how
insightful a critique is if it is not put into practice,
and by the same token a critique not born of practice
is not likely to contain much insight. Talk without
action only sets a precedent for more of the same;
actions themselves can be eloquent, on the other hand,
in ways that words rarely can. Some anarchists seem
to conceive of the process of anarchist organizing
as consisting of a long phase of debate over what
constitutes effective tactics, followed by agreement
upon and application of one approach, but such loquacious
deferral of action is pointless: one need only demonstrate
an effective tactic, and share the skills it requires,
for others to see its worth and adopt it for themselves.
As a dadaist wrote long ago, one is only entitled
to those ideas which one puts into practice. You don’t
become wise by having a lot of ideas, but from trying
them out.

Ultimately, as
usual, the important question is how you can make
use of an inert commodity like this in your own efforts
to live with passion and dignity, and that is something
none of us could help you with from this distance.
Hopefully, however, the legions of aspiring adventurers
who have written us over the past five years asking
how they can join the CrimethInc. collective will
finally have their answer, in the form of this book:
if you want to be a part of this crazy undertaking,
just pick a recipe, or come up with an idea of your
own, and try it out. As the folk singer croons, to
fight for something is to make it your own.

All the best in
all the beautiful, dangerous ventures you’re
involved in already, friends. May your every dream
come true,

f.a.q.

What kind of relationship does this anarchist
cookbook have with the original version released in
the late 60s?
Essentially, the name is all they hold in common.
A minimal amount of research will reveal that the
original "Anarchist Cookbook" was not at
all anarchist—not composed or released by anarchists,
not derived from anarchist practice, not intended
to promote freedom and autonomy or challenge repressive
power--and was barely a cookbook, as the recipes in
it are notoriously unreliable. At best, it was a fraud,
a spoof; at worst, an attempt to undermine the legitimacy
of anarchist practice, and cause readers to injure
themselves. The recent movie by the same name is equally
embarrassing, not so much to anarchists as to the
industry that produced it.

Why is it being released?
All the history aside, the idea of an anarchist cookbook,
if never before really realized, is a good one. In
an increasingly repressive world, it's more important
than ever than people share skills for reclaiming
life and liberty.

What are the biggest changes in this latest
edition?
This book will not feature recipes for food or for
bombs; rather, it provides information such as how
to form a cooperative bike maintenance collective,
how to make use of creative media such as posters
and spraypaint for free expression, and how to resist
the attempts of police to break up demonstrations.
I'd be happy to send you the table of contents.

Who is writing it?
Anarchists have written this anarchist cookbook, coming
together in a loose, voluntary association of friends
and acquaintances from around the world for the composing
and editing process.

Is there going to be any event to launch
the book that the Guardian could cover?
It looks like the book will not be finished quite
in time for this year's UK Anarchist Bookfair. It's
well over 600 pages, and the last of the detail work
is taking a long time. However, it's entirely possible
that once it comes out, there will be a myriad of
post-release events the Guardian might cover, as readers
develop new skills.

How is it being published? What kind of
printers are eager to get involved in a project like
this?
The publisher is the CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective,
an established mouthpiece of anarchist thought and
poetry.

Some would say this isn't the best climate
to release a book giving people instructions on how
to commit acts of terrorism. What's your reply?
This book does not provide any information on how
to commit acts of terrorism. It does not offer any
advice on how to gun down civilians, nor how to blow
them up with smart bombs; it includes no information
about how to destroy the ozone layer or clearcut forests;
it doesn't even give any insight into how one might
brainwash children in schools, exploit blue collar
workers, or bore white collar workers to death. It
does, however, offer a humble starting place from
which those acts of terrorism can be contested. I
would say that this is exactly the climate in which
such a book is needed.